PETA aren’t going to like the title of a new book on sustainable living.

According to Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, keeping a medium-sized dog has the same impact in the environment as driving a 4.6l Land Cruiser.

By the authors’ estimates, Rover wolfs down approximately 164kg of meat and 95 kg of cereal products per annum.

The land required to produce that food is 0.84 hectares (ha) (or 1.1 for a large dog), while building and driving the jeep for a year requires just 0.41 hectares of land.

Felines are not that much better, according to the research.

The average cat’s eco-footprint, 0.15ha, is only slightly smaller than a Volkswagen Golf, but is still ten times a hamster’s 0.014ha – itself, surprisingly, half the eco cost of running a plasma television.

By comparison, the eco-footprint of an average human in the developing world is 1.8ha, while in the developed world it’s 6ha.

“There are no recipes in the book,” one of the authors Robert Vale said. “We’re just saying that we need to think about and know the (ecological) impact of some of the things we do and that we take for granted.”

Convincing carnivorous cats and dogs to go vegetarian for the sake of the planet is a non-starter, the Vales said.

They recommend keeping greener, smaller, and more sustainable pets, such as goldfish, hamsters, chickens or rabbits.